Swedish study finds discrimination against men in female-dominated occupations
psypost.org
psypost.org
"There was no evidence of discrimination against women in male-dominated professions or in mixed-gender professions, but the researchers did find evidence of discrimination against men in female-dominated professions."
Sweden, though.
While true, the hiring process itself has an outsized influence on the problem domain because everything else depends on it.
If you discriminate during the hiring stage you can confidently assert you aren't discriminating elsewhere by sheer merit of not having hired the kinds of people you are charged with discriminating against in the first place.
They complained several times about being forced to hire me because they were in desperate need of a qualified individual.
They were in deep technical trouble from over a dozen incompetent ones with one or more the “correct” checkboxes.
I cleaned up the mess they had made. Then promptly quit. Biggest bunch of bigots I ever met.
Female boss was extremely sexist and made it her mission to put me in my place. Owners thought this was great.
I'm no mathematician but I see it in terms of system numbers: Given a set of occupations with different sex ratios, to change the ratio of any specific occupation the ratios of other occupations must also change.
Incentivizing a specific sex population into an occupation may work for a while; they can boost the overall population in that occupation over the occupations the incentivized population would otherwise enter. However, the true outcome is an overpopulation in the incentivized occupation and underpopulation in others. The difference between incentivized and "natural" population size for an occupation becomes headwinds for any person to enter an occupation resulting in reduced incentive efficiency.
In a simplistic rational "Homo economicus" world some portion of the male population that would enter the female-incentivized occupation would move to other occupations and the sex ratios would change. If it is true that males are discriminated against in occupations with high female ratios, then this would represent an even higher hurdle than the factors that result in sex ratio variance in occupations.
Help an autist out here.
Therefore, in a just world, we'd see an exact 50/50 ratio of men and women in every possible occupation, because there are no differences between men and women, therefore the only possible explanation for non-parity anywhere is because some kind of "systemic" factor is unfairly preventing one of the sexes from achieving the career results that they obviously want.
And if men and women don't want the same things on average, then that itself is a symptom of some kind of systemic problem. Because biology plays no role in human psychology; we're the only species in the animal kingdom to come into this world with no pre-programming and absolutely everything that we do is the result of cultural conditioning. So men and women could be exactly the same if only more parents would let their sons play with Barbie and their daughters play with GI Joe.
It would be nice to deftly and precisely ameliorate this issue by just being able to say “stop acting in a sexually discriminating way because you're impeding someone's will,” and have it be so. But there are still far too many people who are willing to abet the discrimination either silently or willfully, writing the disparity off as a “natural outcome of biology.” So the alternative way to establish justice is the sledgehammer approach that equates the unequal representation with inequity. Because that is _also_ true.
The assumption that an industry that has a large gender imbalance will inevitably end up discriminating against the minority gender is incorrect. Plenty of studies have shown tech companies to actually favor women in hiring:
Tech companies were more likely to give callbacks to female applicants: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3672484
Modulating people to sound like the opposite gender in coding interviews actually hurts women and helps men: https://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-ma...
There are policies that can eliminate bias: Strip names and identifying information out of resumes before recruiters see them. Modulate voices in interviews to eliminate ability to infer gender or foreign accents, and use no video so as to prevent people from identifying races. The problem is that this often doesn't produce the results people are expecting.
The comment you're answering to is talking about harassment and gatekeeping.
Hiring is one gate, but if you're hired just to reach gender goals or to satisfy the lust of your new manager, you will not have the same experience at the company than someone from the other gender. Like getting raises or being promoted.
Things are complicated.
Other factors like harassment are important, but again the evidence doesn't seem to suggest it's responsible for gender imbalances. Engineering has one of the lower rates of harassment among professional industries (32%) less than plenty of industries with more balanced gender representation like healthcare (35%) and media (41%) [1]. And this is just among white-collar industries, service industries and blue collar industries are by far even worse [2].
1. https://variety.com/2018/biz/news/media-industry-sexual-hara...
2. https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/11/21/16685942/sexual-ha...
Furthermore, I would argue that even in cases where discrimination is actually occurring, "stop acting in a sexually discriminating way because you're impeding someone's will" can be the only just solution to the problem. The alternative of actively and intentionally discriminating against other people in the majority group who did nothing wrong is unacceptable, both because it does nothing to address the root of the problem, and because discrimination on the basis of irrelevant factors like sex is wrong regardless of who the target of that discrimination is.
What's worse is when people use unequal outcomes as the sole justification for actively discriminating against majority groups, because now not only are you perpetrating these injustices in the pursuit of an ideal percentage of men and woman in the industry, but you're also running the risk of being wrong about what that ideal percentage is in the first place, actively pushing men and women into roles they wouldn't naturally choose in an ideal world where unjust discrimination didn't exist.
I understand the point you're making that ratio targeting seems immune to indications that a different natural ratio exists that differs from the imposed one, but I argue there is sensitivity to negative feedback. If there really is a natural sample ratio that differs materially from that found in the broader population, businesses will eventually be unable to hire according to the ratio. The danger is of course setting up a system that's wholly immune to that possibility and risk coming to lay upon a Procrustean bed. But I think profit motive is sufficient to dampen that risk. Businesses who are simply unable to find and hire qualified candidates who fulfill their target ratio will abandon that ratio by degrees.
I suspect when these people finally cede on biological differences between the genders, they will just argue that these biological differences themselves are a product of our sinful and fallen world. Don't underestimate the incredible portability of these folks' goalposts.
Who are you nope-ing? Because your comment aligns to my beliefs just fine…
Might not get that impression just from the selected quote, but initial part makes it clear.
I think some people in the technology field unfortunately take everything at face value and are not really thinking about the various power plays in motion when it comes to persuasion and influence. I would point out that some people stand to make money and gain power off of promoting these views, and of course some employers stand to make a hell of a lot of money off of promoting these views.
I'd say that until there's a societal movement to even out the gender imbalance in boilermakers, roofers, deep sea fishers, oil drillers, and other difficult but very profitable careers, that distrusting the motives of those that claim to want to even out the gender imbalance in the workplace is fair game.
Equality of opportunity is very different, and much better to strive for, than equality of outcome.
I doubt women are significantly more inclined to think this arrangement is unfair. I believe social progressives think it’s unfair, and the media would have us believe that women and racial minorities are largely socially progressive when in fact they aren’t (consider that only a small minority of blacks support defunding the police and women’s and men’s views on abortion are very similar).
In any case, not all compensation is monetary, and it’s widely understood that women prioritize flexibility and other perks over money directly, while men optimize for monetary compensation. Further, much of the money made by men is spent by women anyway—in married households, women spend the majority of the money.
With IT the actual wages are much higher than union rates, and employers will have hard time to find anyone outside fresh graduates at those rates.
And this system has broken down this year, so things might go different.
That somewhat varies by country (i.e. a bunch of Swedish developers I know are, just because it's so common there for entire companies to have blanket union contracts for everyone), but in general: no.
Probably not, because it's ultimately a political phenomenon. In left-leaning circles it's popular to deny that there can be significant statistical differences between demographics for any reason other than discrimination. Based on that logic they view all unequal gender ratios as problems that need to be solved.
I would rephrase it as "it's popular to deny that there's an underlying preference at play when jobs which used to be female dominated, like programming, became male dominated shortly after they became lucrative."
Bringing it back to the subject of the article, this entire discussion is really about tribalism. Humans tend to look favorably on their group and askance at other groups. Where people get into trouble with this is assuming you know from the outside what groups someone thinks they belong to (e.g. do you see yourself as a man who happens to be a programmer or a programmer who happens to be a man).
As for the "jobs became male dominated when they became lucrative" observation, it seems like very weak evidence for discrimination. If I were a betting man, I would guess that as the field became lucrative, the number of jobs in the field rapidly outpaced the supply of qualified women (how many women were literate in math or programming in a time when it wasn't common for women to go to college at all).
Moreover, women achieved parity with men in fields like medicine and law in the 80s and 90s when discrimination and harassment were pervasive, explicit, and severe by today's standards. What's going on in tech today that only 20% of our workforce is female despite many, considerable advantages:
* Explicit sexual discrimination and harassment have been illegal and taboo for decades
* The overwhelming majority of US tech jobs have been concentrated in the most ideologically progressive counties for decades (one would expect lower levels of harassment and discrimination in these places)
* Every sizable tech company has a dedicated DEI department and quarterly DEI seminars
* Most tech companies have diversity hiring and retention targets
And not only that, but there appears to be a pronounced inverse correlation between gender equality in a society and the careers that women select into. In other words, the societies in which women are the most free are often the societies that have the least even gender/job distributions and vice versa.
All of this is to say that your perception of "left leaning beliefs" is hardly better than the parent's.
Programming was never female dominated. What we call "programmer" now (writing algorithms to compute artillery trajectories or whatever) would have just been "scientist" back then. "Coder" (and before that, human "computer") were indeed female-dominated positions but there's no analog to that in the modern world; we've completely replaced those jobs with assemblers/compilers and electronic calculators respectively.
I feel like my interpretation of that quote is fairly accurate.
its a political phenomenon if you make it about left/right. There is evidence of discrimination society wide. That doesn't have to be political.
Discrimination is wrong and can be fixed.
In left-leaning circles, people accept that there is discrimination, regardless of other reasons.
In right-leaning circles, people deny that they or others have done anything wrong, and don't solve real issues encountered.
Source: There are lots of accounts of people being discriminated against in hiring or professional opportunities.
https://www.econtalk.org/chris-arnade-on-dignity/
Photographer, author, and former Wall St. trader Chris Arnade talks about his book, Dignity, with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Arnade quit his Wall Street trading job and criss-crossed America photographing and getting to know the addicted and homeless who struggle to find work and struggle to survive. The conversation centers on what Arnade learned about Americans and about himself.
If status here means “respect” rather than “wealth”, there are precious few groups with lower status than that of white males these days. At least in many places, “white male” is practically a slur.
Diversity in general is good because you'll get different ideas into the mix and will be more likely to be able to envision and explore different possibilities.
Make sense?
Are you implying that it is ok for your sons to be in such a field?
To answer your question though...
To establish a baseline, women get paid, as a whole, less than men for a particular job title (women doctor paid less than male doctor, women electrician paid less than male electrician). This is on a statistical basis when normalized for experience, location, etc. It may not be that eg. a particular iTunes team at apple has this imbalance, but across all industries, across all companies, across all locations, this statistic emerges. This is wrong, because men and women are equally deserving of money. Thats not politics, that's human decency. To quote an SNL skit "she made the unfortunate choice of career after getting a law degree. Instead of working a lawyer, she chose to work as a female lawyer".
Beyond this, women also tend to occupy jobs that pay less than men (teacher vs lawyer, nurse vs SWE, etc). This means, again, that as a whole, women in society have less money than men. People tend to be skeptical in the issue here because of the perception of choice a women has over her career. I (a man) have heard from countless women in engineering school and later as a professional that women are made to feel like they don't belong. My own mother (who has no reason to lie to me), an engineer, made the newspaper for being one of the first females licensed in her field. She told me countless stories of men passively trying to make her feel like she didn't belong. This sense of not-belonging means that the "choice" to work a lower-paid job is less of a truly independent choice and more of a societal nudge.
Now that there is some established evidence of why women make less than men, I'll let the reader decide if its wrong.
Now that we've decided it is wrong that women are paid less without choice, we should try to fix it.
How should we fix it? Lets get women into higher-paid job that's don't have many women! But which ones? Like you said, you don't want your daughters in oil fields, but surely you'd be much happier with your daughter in an office building somewhere typing at a computer? Maybe something with good WLB? Maybe without the need for a decade of education (and loans!)?
Great! SWE is a job that pays well, is safe, and has a generally "easy" way to enter - just a bachelors degree, and amble internships. Bonus is that all the equipment you need to learn is a computer (which most people have), so that's a lot easier to supply to poor kids who may have more trouble getting lessons.
Other jobs that are high-focus for female-occupation are doctors/lawyers/finance. Those jobs also pay well but have higher education requirements, or worse WLB, or are harder to get. But some (like doctors) have huge prestige. Who doesn't want their daughter to have a safe, high-prestige, well-paid job? No one is trying to get their daughter (or son!) to work on a crabbing boat - one of the most dangerous jobs in America!
TLDR: Why do we as a society focus on ending the professional gender ratio mis-alignment on certain jobs? Because no one wants those other jobs (for any gender really), and the goal is to get women equal opportunity for salary or equal prestige, and that is easier in some fields.
It is a misuse of aggregate descriptive statistics to ascribe moral right or wrong since the state of the world for this dimension, “income,” is the result of 7b+ choices that might still add up to “wrong” even if all those choices were “right.”
It would be helpful if the ideas of Judah Pearl [0] were more in the minds of people, in particular the identification of causes.
I only have daughters.
Then the woman makes actions to fix this for herself and future women.
Nearly 900k applications analyzed, with the conclusion of preference in favor of women.
Do you have examples of these practices?
Although not predictive on an individual level, the (perceived?) general trend is that men are more accepting of that kind of environment than women are.
I've seen people make the argument that a woman shouldn't lead an infantry platoon because it would prevent grunts from coping with the death and destruction they face every day. Similar for defense attorneys. Nobody wants to risk being reported for sexual harassment because they laugh at something that happens in a rape trial; they also don't want to be forced to be 100% serious at all times behind closed doors.
I'm not convinced these ideas have merit, particularly due to self-selection. Most women don't volunteer to be infantry officers unless they want to be part of the infantry culture. But that does seem to be the operating perception.
Men must complete a three-mile run within 18 minutes to get a maximum score on that portion of the PFT, while women younger than 40 have up to 21 minutes.
For Marines between 17 and 20 years old, men must do 20 pullups to get a maximum score; women must do seven.
On the CFT, men must lift a 30-pound ammunition can between 106 and 120 times within two minutes to get a max score. Women must lift the can between 66 and 75 times for a maximum score.
If the standards are un-equal discrimination is natural.
Former active duty Marine here. I'm on your side in this 100% for several reasons I won't go into, but the 18 and 21 minutes you stated is off by quite a bit. It's roughly 28 (male) and 32 minutes (female) for 3 miles - it may have changed by a minute or two since I've been out. This still aligns with the basic premise of your statement.
For reference, 3 miles at 18 or sub-18 minutes is getting to an elite level of running, while low to mid 20's is average.
Note the average here does not translate into an ability to predict performance of a particular person based on biological sex as the variation is too high for that, but statistically the effect is rather significant.
So I suspect if a profession require a lot of social interactions, the observed discrimination is simple reflection that men may perform worse on average in those professions.
A person on average tend to be more comfortable and confident in decisions if its mimics behavior of people that look/are similar to themselves.
The teaching profession in Sweden actually start out with almost 50/50 during the first year at university. What the Swedish study found was that as students had setbacks, the students that decided to quit was mostly men. By graduation time a large portion of the male students has quit. Same thing occurs when people start seeking jobs, after the first year, second year, third year and fourth year. At the end the wast majority of men are gone from the profession, most citing "culture mismatch" and not feeling that they belong.
I find this theory much more plausible explanation than hormones, and it also explains why removing gender roles might increase gender segregation. If a person is uncertain where they fit, making a similar decision to other people in the same situation will on average feel safer. It also explain why mentor programs are one of the most effective tactics to combat gender segregation.
My own anecdotal observation for Norway matches this. Norway is the top of charts regarding gender equality. Yet for example, family lawyers, a highly paid profession, here are mostly women, a complete reversal of situation that was 50 years ago.
In software development the gender inequality increased during the last 20 years especially if one accounts that many women in IT here are immigrants. They find it is easier to get a job without good knowledge of Norwegian (in IT in Norway English is typically enough) even if such jobs are not something that they prefer all other things considered equal.
This is an interesting low-blame description of a phenomenon that might otherwise be described as discrimination because of a hostile work environment.
I actually think the real issue is that men are not always professional when working with women that they find attractive. Time for personal anecdote: Every woman I know in tech has been hit on by coworkers, sometimes multiple times even though turning down the man. Depending on the guy, it can get real nasty. In addition, they all hear the same thing at least once "Wow you know programming/hacking/linux, pretty cool for being a girl". Imaging hearing that shit over and over again, of course you will quit.
My point is, there are many factors at play here. Sadly, I don't think there is a good solution to this problem.
Logically there is an alternative: one sex can withdraw from the labor market.
Male labor force participation is declining.[1] Female labor force participation is declining at a slightly lower rate.[2]
1. 80% -> 74.5%, 1990-2019. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.MA.ZS
2. 51% -> 47%, 1990 - 2019. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS
That's interesting. I work in a female-dominated occupation (libraries), but, it's only female dominated at the lower levels. Historically, at least, directors/managers and the upper level folks tended to be men, and those are of course the only jobs that pay very well. So while there's waaay more female librarians, there's way more male library directors. I think that's been slowly changing recently. I don't see that they look at libraries in this study, nor do they mention managers.
Gender segregation, ie what fields are dominated by which gender, is related but quite different. For Swedish numbers I can strongly recommend the primary source (https://www.scb.se/hitta-statistik/statistik-efter-amne/arbe...), collected by the Swedish tax agency and published by the government agency for statistics. The only major drawback is that it is a lot of information and its hard to locate the exact thing (Just choosing the right database interfaces can be hard).
That said, in this case, we can mostly identify the correct numbers. Librarian is a female dominated professions with a ratio of 2:1 (found through the database interface that lists profession and gender), with a similar gender ratio in favor of women for manager levels in the government sector (https://www.scb.se/hitta-statistik/statistik-efter-amne/arbe...).
It should be noted that Sweden has a very high level of gender segregation, and that segregation occurs based on multiple attributes.
And I can safely say that I have not ever noticed any discrimination against male artists while studying it. Quite the contrary.
What this could look like in the art world is a lower tendency than women towards a stable yet income-capped career like art teacher, and a higher tendency towards a risky yet unlimited potential path as an independent artist. A small fraction of independent artists become rich and famous, or even have a sustainable career, but you'll hear about the few that actually make it. In this scenario there may be more male success stories, but there will be an even greater number of failures.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2741240/
I haven't heard many feminists argue for a female quota in prisons yet.
You're using divisive language with your second sentence and poison pilling the entire argument by attacking feminists.
This doesn't have to be a feminist vs whatever war, it needs to be a conversation around male issues and we need everyone at the table to make things better.
Which means that yes, the incarceration rates are (or should be, it's not like there's a feminist cabal I speak for;) concerning for feminists
Not in the sense that we should simply incarcerate not women, but in the sense that we should desperately look for the systemic issues that result in this outcome.
There's a good chance that a strong gender binary and an idea that it's somehow "men vs women" actively contributes. (E.g. because we stereotypically assign more social behavior to girls, and reward/excuse antisocial behavior in boys)
Trying to frame this as an either/or debate is directly detrimental to ever achieving equitable outcomes.
Anti-male bias in the justice system, which has been shown to be around 6x higher than the anti-black bias in the justice system.
> reward/excuse antisocial behavior in boys
We do not. Society strongly discourages not just anti-social behavior in boys, it nowadays discourage a LOT of boy behavior that isn't actually anti-social. Boys are seen as defective girls. And of course the education system hugely discriminates against boys. Unabashedly so.
> Feminism isn't about just swapping gender roles and just giving power to women.
That used to be true. It no longer is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentencing_disparity
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337844261_Sentencin...
https://crimsoc.hull.ac.uk/2020/06/18/gender-differences-and...
The less sexist explanation is that women generally use suicide attempts as a way of asking for help while men generally use suicide attempts as a way of escape.
Stated in those terms, both groups are very competent at achieving the end goal.
Each component of what I stated in response to the comment above is accurate, and an appropriate explanation of the implied assumption in it that suicide lies more commonly with men than women (a common misconception arising from what I explain).
One may disagree with their conclusion that the origin of these problem also has to do with patriarchy, but to claim that these forms of suffering that disproportionately affect men are ignored by feminists is false.
Meanwhile, women have fought long and hard to be accepted as equals in the (voluntary) military.
And you will find many supporters if instead the selective service, you'd support e.g a year of mandatory social service.
You'll also find support to abandon the draft. (it's a highly unnecessary measure in the face of a professional military). You might even find support to have an egalitarian draft if we move further away from a professional military and instead institute mandatory military service.
But "here's a really bad idea that disproportionality affects a specific group, we should double down to affect more groups negatively" just isn't a proposition appealing to many people - male or female.
But this is pretty much the same reason that we don’t see outcry about the lack of women working on garbage trucks: it’s not a desirable thing.
The Google gender pay gap lawsuit was covered extensively a few years ago. It's outcome (men were actually underpaid based on the data) that resulted in a large number of male employees at Google getting payouts and salary boosts was essentially ignored.
It's still unsatisfying at some level though. Reading left-leaning news (say the BBC), you're far more likely to read a story about desirable equality that doesn't mention the undesirable side. To be clear, I'm not opposed to equality at all. The discussion often just doesn't seem to be nuanced.
https://thefeministshop.com/blogs/the-feminist-shop-blog/why...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/why-the-patriarchy-is...
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09589236.2018.15...
I'm sure someone with more time (or better yet: deeper familiarity with academic feminist analysis than I have) could find many more.
My parents were independent artists, but did not understand marketing. Now we have hundreds of artworks and no money.
I’m of the impression that we can’t reduce gaps without introducing the threat of social declassment of women when they fail.
Engaging in a race to the bottom, ensuring everybody is equally bad off, is maybe not the best strategy to ensure equal treatment. (yes, it works. It's just not very productive)
- People do not want to provide this safety net for men,
- People psychologically resist to remove it from women.
Equality is not possible.
As for the second statement: Removing a safety net from somebody else for equality's sake is the equivalent of a three year old smashing their toy so their brother can't play with it either. Yep, equal outcome is guaranteed now, but there's a more adult way to handle it.
It's very rare for organizations to grant leadership roles to anyone not already seeking it (usually by performing that role or applying for that job) in some capacity.
One of the major faults in these analyses is to not account for cohorts — and so they discriminate against men in the here and now (fresh hires) to “balance” historic issues that haven’t aged out yet.
That purposeful (and misguided) bigotry is the basis of a lot of modern movements, like “anti-racism”.
The example of this is affirmative action. If you could wave a magic wand that perfectly equalized yearly pay between all races of people in the US, you would still see wealth disparities persist for many years (possibly generations, and possibly not get any better), because wealth and financial literacy are passed down through families and interracial marriage is somewhat uncommon. Affirmative action (explicit discrimination on the basis of race) deliberately and purposefully seeks to counterbalance against this effect.
Now, I think that that issue is better solved by higher inheritance taxes, mandatory personal finance classes in schools, and more equitable school funding, but the point is that it's not always a lack of understanding of age cohorts that drives such policies. It's possible to understand the real logic behind such policies and still disagree with them.
My hypothesis is that men are considered much much riskier hires for certain roles.
The reason I thought of these two roles in particular is because socially I've often heard expressed worries that men in daycare are more likely to be sex offenders, and for cleaning I've often come across the sentiment that men are more likely to steal (in Sweden). If those beliefs are pervasive the discrimination should be reflected in the data too, as employers steer away from hiring men.
Indeed the discrimination effect is significantly weaker if you look at table 1 in the 'Data' section of study while discounting these two roles.
You can spin it any way you want - majority of sexual abuse happens with family members, so actually leaving a child with a stranger is a lot safer, if all you care about is statistical data /s
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/30/shrinking-g...
This is the same argument used to argue planes are safer than cars, but there is a missing component: for individuals choosing which transport to take, they can evaluate the specifics of their case. If they know they are not a high-risk driver, the chance of dying in a car accident is much lower, but the chance of dying in a plane crash stays the same.
As such, for high-risk drivers, travelling by plane is safer, but possibly so is taking a taxi.
The choice here is between male or female carers all of which are non-family members, so it isn't a consideration.
This is a super faulty argument as _a lot_ of death related to driving accidents are caused by other people.
If I look just in my environment all care related death have been caused by "other" people which some times but not always also died.
> all care related death have been caused by "other" people
this doesn't follow from the example I gave. The point is you can't use statistical averages for a decision that likely will have far more context to it.
In this case the discrepancy between sex-offenders in the entire population vs all candidates for a carer position, the least of which is most abuse happening in-family, excluding all those example from the case of a carer that is not family.
Nearly everybody sucks terribly at evaluating their own driving performance, and I have only met one or two people who have had their driving performance properly assessed by a trained evaluator.
TL;DR: no-one knows that they're a low risk driver, and the people who claim "I'm a safe driver" are often much worse than average.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/11/the-unde...
What little is known hints that female predators may be just as prominent as male predators, but people just don't believe victims who claim female abusers.
This all ties into the pervasive myths about how women are always passive, are generally good because they are women, have no sexual desire, etc.
It's about convictions and about press reporting which are inherently influenced by bias.
For example some years ago a couple was found to be the main heads some child pornography ring. But while the press mentioned it was a couple they basically only reported about the man, not the women. There where no indications that the women was forced into it. But due to biased-conservative thinking the press treated the man as the sole responsible person...
Similar you will probably find many cases (with varying outcomes) against male kindergarten teachers because of pedophile actions in situations where no-one really can tell if a pedophile action was involved. But how many of this cases are their against woman?
You're inferring results from faulty logic.
I didn't argue it does. It does mean that men are riskier hires though (by whatever marginal percent.)
Most sex offenders are not kindergarten teachers...
Most are family members or "friends of the family".
Also there is a strong bias leading to female sex offenders being much less often convicted (partially because they are also much less often reported).
This conclusion seems to be quite controversial, because race is correlated with certain crimes in terms of "actual risk". It's likely because of social factors (because eg. black immigrants to US aren't significantly more likely to commit crimes than white immigrants to US, even after controlling for education), but it doesn't change "actual risk".
If you argue that "actual risk" means actually "choice between two identical people, with skin color being only variable, after ideal control for socioeconomic factors", you should prove that of "identical people, with gender being only variable, after ideal control for socioeconomic factors" man is more likely to commit sexual crime.
Personally I would argue that both race-crime and gender-crime statistics are largely or completely due to social factors.
> Personally I would argue that both race-crime and gender-crime statistics are largely or completely due to social factors.
I think this is probably right too, but which social factors are you thinking about when it comes to sex offenses?
Males, in the other hand, exist across countries, races, creeds, cultures, social and economic classes etc. We can absolutely look at male crime statistics across the board and say whether or not they're different from the statistics for females.
Last I checked, the majority of violence against children (including murder) is by women. So women should not be hired into this role. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Discrimination again Man in certain jobs (like kindergarten teacher) is long known and widespread.
Even today people judging a man who want to become a Kindergarten teacher as likely pedophile is not uncommon.
I believe that given that kindergarten teachers act to some degree as role models, the lake of male ones might have noticeable negative effects on some children. Especial such which have problematic parents.
- Men were half as likely as women to get a response when applying for a child care position (25.7% of men vs. 52.8% of women)
- Men were half as likely as women to get a response when applying for a cleaner position (12.1% men vs. 27.8% women)
Link to study: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
I have a friend that is on the board of directors for a number of large companies. Not surprisingly, he says that boards are all looking for women and minorities. Publicly traded companies are naturally in competition for the best board members they can find in these categories.
In research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2015), the investigators determined that faculty comittees prefer female candidates 2 to 1 over male candidates with equally strong resumes. See [1].
[1] “National hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America | April 2015
No one group is particularly more righteous, as much as the recent zeitgeist wants to lull us into this belief. Many people even believe that countries would be better off if mostly women ran it. Well, all you’d have is a bunch of corrupt women instead of a bunch of corrupt men.
I work in a place that is currently undergoing some diversity, equity, and inclusion education for staff.
One camp sees it as an attack on themselves. "I'm not racist, I can't be racist, I would never act like that."
One camp sees it as an opportunity to attack others. "My experience is that people like you are racist. My experience is that people like you treat me poorly."
I can't get the two parts of this argument to understand that ---literally every human stereotypes and uses those stereotypes to make decisions--- and that's okay, as long as you identify them, and work to NOT make decisions based solely on stereotypes.
There is no 'good' group or 'bad' group (outside of overt racists or something like that). Everyone sucks a little, but some groups have more power to turn their suck into policy. And everyone needs to know that to be able to try to fix it.
If you take something like prejudice toward a race with respect to crime, or prejudice toward a gender with respect to competence, these things are happening at a level that require systems-level thinking. If you beef up certain communities with respect to opportunities, or funnel more people toward certain industries much earlier in their life, the outcomes will appear at the macro level. Once that happens, the reduction in those biases will manifest.
But sitting everyone down and saying ‘let’s all sit down and do our own small little part’ will not actually solve anything. But, that is most likely the reason we (humans gonna human) are doing this. It’s a form of procrastination, let’s beat around the bush. Let’s organize our folders and sharpen our pencils, but not study for the test. Let’s buy new gym sneakers and gym outfit, and actually get a new gym membership, but never go to the gym.
Oddly, it’s almost like America only does the algos part of the software interview, but never the System design part. Micro vs Macro.
By saying this, you render everything else you have said here moot. Once you declare systemic racism as an unassailable fact, all of your reasoning is simply affirming the consequent.
It’s entirely possible that racial inequity exists, and that some of it is a consequence of past and present racism, but that this does not mean that the ‘system is racist’ is a meaningful analysis.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
https://www.acrosswalls.org/sex-ratio-prisoners-across-world...
One "occupation" where discrimination against men is shocking.
Things such as kindergarten, secretary, a lot of jobs where you interact with the public favor female employees over males, such as receptionists. Just to name a few.
>"There was no evidence of discrimination against women in male-dominated professions or in mixed-gender professions, but the researchers did find evidence of discrimination against men in female-dominated professions."
Again, anecdotal, but I've seen discrimination from places like the military, construction work, police work to name a few.
I don't think we needed a study to state the obvious, but I guess it helps creating more conversations about the topic.
In a previous life I ended up in a interview for a marketing position at a smallish company. I was in a room with 8 moderately attractive women aged 25 - 45.
Before I left, I asked what's up with that. Their reply was literally: it just happened.
Frankly, I don't mind. Sometimes it's for the better. Who wants to work for a company where everyone is the same? Not this guy
The naughty part of me would have loved it there, though. At least for a while.
EDIT: not sure why the downvote: being on the far end of a political spectrum isn't necessarily a bad thing. Citation: [1]
[1] https://www.oecd.org/els/emp/last-mile-longest-gender-nordic...
Even studies about gender or race discrimination always have the same kind of objections. Usually about how the purportedly discriminated against group isn't discriminated against but actually is objectively less competent and thus its worse outcome is "natural". For example, that there are fewer female than male tech entrepreneurs, I have been told, is because women are more risk-averse than men. The reason is absolutely not that investors are biased against female tech entrepreneurs.
However! In this discussion, no one has yet offered the hypothesis that the purported discrimination against men could be explained by men being objectively less suitable to work in female-dominated professions than women. Perhaps men have less "emotional iq" than women or something?
I find it very fascinating how the general take from a supposedly knowledgeable group of people (HN commentators) changes when the topic changes from "women are discriminated against" to "men are discriminated against"!
Well, I'll bite. If you really want to go down this road we could also start talking about how women being given time off specifically for their menstrual cycle or menopause (the latter is being seriously discussed in the media etc.) when there are no equivalent allowances whatsoever for men (despite the fact that men die younger than women!) means that women are 'objectively less suitable' for work full stop. Have you stopped to consider why the HN audience may have reacted as they have, and aren't you in fact guilty of the very thing you are accusing them of, that is, jumping to a conclusion about their thinking etc?
I don't follow your logic. If someone takes, let's say an entire year off for menopause, but they live 5+ years longer, don't they have better working potential?
On most studies regarding discrimination, HN readers clamor to rebut the methodology. That isn't happening here. Is the study bombproof, or is it possible that confirmation bias is at play?
My bias in support of this article comes from many anecdotal experiences that support the conclusions of the study and none that don't.
I think your comment would indicate that I am therefore "supposedly knowledgeable" but not actually knowledgeable. I would strongly disagree: I have this scientific study and my experiential knowledge on this topic.
"There was no evidence of discrimination against women in male-dominated professions or in mixed-gender professions, but the researchers did find evidence of discrimination against men in female-dominated professions."
"female applicants had a 52.17 percent relative advantage"
"This study only captures discrimination at the initial stages of the hiring process at entry level jobs in Sweden"
>no one has yet offered the hypothesis that the purported discrimination against men could be explained by men being objectively less suitable to work in female-dominated professions than women. Perhaps men have less "emotional iq" than women or something?
No such thing could have happened even if that's the case, from the study: "the group belonging of the fictitious applicants is experimentally manipulated, most commonly by randomizing the applicant’s name." "Correspondence tests can naturally only measure discrimination at the initial stage of the hiring process and may understate the true extent of hiring discrimination if it occurs at later stages of the process."
Women may face other types of workplace discrimination, as the article also says, but when it comes to hiring and college admissions there is overt and (mostly) legal discrimination against men. This is supported by data [2], procedure [3], and myriad anecdotes [4].
Some think this is necessary (even a moral imperative) for correcting historical injustices, but at the very least we should avoid gaslighting people and acknowledge in plain language that discrimination against men exists.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action
[2]: The Atlantic: Men Are the New College Minority https://archive.md/CrAxH
[3]: WSJ: YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Men, Lawsuit Says https://archive.md/tl5lO
[4]: I personally know about a brother and sister applying to the same college, where the brother got rejected with a higher GPA while the sister got in.
That's not a study but in terms of legal doctrine it seems to be a settled issue.
The Supreme Court decided that favoring underrepresented minority groups did not violate the 14th amendment equal protection clause. Writing for the majority, Sandra Day O'conor said "race-conscious admissions policies must be limited in time," and said that the Court believed that in 25 years that limit might be reached. Ruth Bader Ginsburg agreed with the ruling but not with having a time limit.
I'm not a lawyer so I don't know what I'm talking about, so I suggest seeing the Wikipedia page:
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2013/jun/25/supreme-court-vo...
[1] Yes, Wikipedia confirms that affirmative action is a thing societies across the world engage in it to try to have a representative cross section of the population engaged in critical aspects of society. And yes, in America since the practice became enshrined in law that meant it has cut into the edge that white men have. But if in the future white men become under-represented for whatever reason, I would hope that it would work in the reverse to help give a boost. And in-fact this is already being seen in college admissions for white men vs. asian americans and females. Which leads to your second source:
[2] The article points out that white men are underrepresented in college but the reason given is not affirmative action, but rather cultural. Many young men just are not making the choice to go to college (for better or for worse). It even says in TFA that "The Wall Street Journal reports that many colleges are putting their fingers _on_ the scale for male applicants", which is a direct refutation of your point.
[3] I could file a lawsuit against the state that says politicians are colluding with martian men to keep taco prices down. That doesn't make it true.
[4] Well I have never seen anyone _cite_ an anecdote so...
EDIT: Spelling and grammar
I didn't realize making people click on ads was a critical aspect of society (FAANG firms use DEI tactics to preference URMs). Getting an undergrad education in engineering at a top school isn't a critical aspect either.
Instead of focusing on white men, why don't you take a look at the stats around Asian men? Or Asians in general? The Harvard affirmative action lawsuit revealed the extent to which affirmative action is a grossly discriminative policy that unreasonably raises admission standards for certain demographics to enforce a quota (and quotas are illegal according to the Supreme Court).
I agree that it isn't good that motivated and qualified people that really want to go to a top tier college are rejected. However, that is the basic fact of life when there are 10x more applicants that open spots. I think if we really wanted to tackle this issue as a society the way to start would be to increase the availability and affordability of high quality post-primary education. Let's assume that the lawsuit's basic premise is correct that Asian Americans would be accepted at a much much higher rate if race was eliminated from the acceptance criteria, and then Harvard started evaluating application as such. Harvard would become an Asian American mono-culture to the detriment of not just white people but Hispanic, Black and other under-represented minorities. Is that a good outcome???
I'm speaking loosely because I realize "Asian American" is a quite a broad cultural generalization, but I do personally admire the work-ethic and reverence for science and intellectual pursuit that has gotten this community to where it is today, to quote Drake "You came from the bottom now your whole team here". But as a White male American, I think when you are at the top of the food chain you have a responsibility to see to it that those who are not have an opportunity, otherwise that makes you an asshole.
> let's assume that the lawsuit's basic premise is correct
We don't need to assume, we can look at the makeup of UC and UW schools which are legally barred from using affirmative action and are similarly ranked. They average ~50% Asian.
> mono-culture
Your basic premise is that the greater proportion a race is of the population, the more monocultural the population becomes. Not only is that racist, but coming from what I assume is a white liberal it seems very hypocritical.
> responsibility to see to it that those who are not have an opportunity
I'm happy to support income based affirmative action. As we all know, parental income plays a far larger role in SAT scores and lifetime earnings than any systemic discrimination. But racial discrimination under the guise of affirmative action is a terrible idea that doesn't actually result in better outcomes. When you admit objectively less qualified people because of a quota those less qualified people end up doing more poorly down the line in the real world.
For example, even though CMU enforces a 50/50 male/female quota on its CS admits, the makeup of high paying jobs with people from CMU still ends up around the industry 80/20 male/female split, because the 20% that would have originally been qualified to get in without the quota end up doing just as well as their male counterparts that didn't have affirmative action benefits and the other 30% struggle to keep up because they weren't qualified in the first place.
Totally agree, I would even go further and say that I think the "top tier" engineering schools are not better (actually I would argue worse because brilliant researchers aren't always brilliant teachers), they just are able to be a lot more selective with the people that they admit and that is probably the biggest factor on why they are perceived as elite. Which makes me roll my eyes at the whole "boo-hoo I didn't get into an ivy" culture that is driving all this resentment in the first place.
> Your basic premise is that the greater proportion a race is of the population, the more mono-cultural the population becomes
Yes and no. I am fully aware that just because I am white I am not of the same culture as another white person. And even more so are the differences between Asian cultures (I have lived and traveled in many parts of Asia). But if you take a general cross-section of people who look similar and live in the same geographical area, and compare them to a different group of people who look similar in the same area, you will find stark economic correlation between the two groups. This is why it is important to be conscious of the way that race is viewed and handled within a society. The argument that "I don't see color" is a very common sentiment amongst actual racists because
1. It makes them feel like they aren't a bad person
2. Conveniently allows them a free pass to not have to take a hard look at their ingrained racial biases
> Income based affirmative action
I agree, this to me seems like a much better metric for providing for affirmative action quotas, however:
1. It would result in very similar outcomes due to the economic correlation between racial groups
2. It could never happen because the American right would scream their heads off about socialism or whatever non-sense their propagandists spoon feed them.
3. Income != Wealth, and wealth is the real killer, so it also is not a silver bullet
> stark economic correlation
This is completely unrelated to peoples' culture, which you claimed would become a monoculture if schools were majority Asian. If you want to be "conscious of the way that race is viewed and handled within a society" why don't you take a look at the Chinese Exclusion Act and Japanese WW2 concentration camps? If you take the stance that reparations should be made for systemic injustices, then you should be _preferencing_ Asians.
> would result in very similar outcomes due to the economic correlation between racial groups
I suggest you take a look at UC and UW admissions data and rethink your position. All the available evidence of unbiased admissions used in practice show substantial Asian overrepresentation even adjusted for income.
You need to take a serious look at the peoples' preferences you're ignoring when you decide to preach about the "importance" of race in society. California, where Democrats literally have a supermajority, voted down Prop 16 by a 20 point margin.
And maybe while you're at it, take a look at how racist your statements are. Implying that schools will evolve a monoculture if Asians become the majority is blatantly racist. Everything you've said thus far matches up to a tee the picture of a white liberal who thinks he knows everything and wants to dictate how people should view society. This [1] article literally exactly represents what you believe. People like you ARE the problem.
[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/09/blame-t...
Really adds some credence to your “I’m not a racist, you’re a racist!” Argument /s
That’s actually a fantastic article, it outlines pretty well the hypocrisy of the left. You may find that there are some of us on the left that are trying to call out this bullshit too.
You should take a look at this video by John Oliver [1]. I find it hilarious how 9 years and 2 presidents later it is still relevant. You refuse to admit that _you're the one spewing the bullshit_. Any thought that you could be wrong is just inconceivable to you.
[1]: https://www.cc.com/video/slfmox/the-daily-show-with-jon-stew...
[1] So we agree that the practice exists, though we may disagree on whether it's moral or not.
[2] You are right in that it is in part cultural, but the effect of affirmative action also exists. (I think you would agree, otherwise, why not dismantle it and avoid the resentment that it brings about?) Also, culture is not autogenous.
[3] Again, you are right in that you can sue anyone for anything if you have the money. But I think the claims in the lawsuit have merit (although the process is probably legal). Do you believe the diversity trackers they mentioned do not exist?
[4] You have never seen someone use a footnote to share their anecdotes? :-)
Yes, I believe that affirmative action is not only moral, but also necessary for optimal functioning of modern democracy with many disparate cultures under it's governance. Do you think we would be better off with maintaining the status quo from the 50's?
I can see how affirmative action can breed resentment, I myself was resentful while getting my engineering degree to seeing the high rate of female students getting internships when I never was able to get one. It really sucks when you are working hard towards a goal and see someone else pass you up just because of circumstance (not all of which are as pure as affirmative action, such as students coming from a wealthy well-connected family, or organized cheating cough fraternities cough to get good grades). But maybe it would be better if we directed our anger towards those that are getting ahead by cheating, rather than those that are getting ahead due to society deciding that they need a boost because they come from a place in society that has been traditionally discriminated against?
TBH, I do not have a clear understanding of how things were in the 50's, but I do not think things would go back to the 50's if affirmative action programs were discontinued.
We probably can agree that there are a lot of anecdotes about this as you have one yourself. Contrary to popular belief, anecdotes and personal experiences are not worthless.
I agree that our anger should be placed directed the system which enables corruption, cheating and discrimination. Blaming the ordinary individuals would be counterproductive and sanctimonious.
[1]: For example, the Atlantic article does not mention affirmative action at all. You'd probably argue that's because it is not a major factor, but I think it is the elephant in the room. If I could edit my comment now, I would change "data" to "outcome data", and cite this graph https://archive.md/VwSmO. I do not see anything wrong with putting an anecdote in a footnote, however.
The details of the case are pretty damning [1]. Directly instructing recruiters to only hire diverse candidates [2]. Explicit quotas on gender and race [3]. Managers telling recruiter to only accept candidates from "historically underrepresented" groups [4].
1. https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/2/17070624/google-youtube-wi...
2. https://html.scribdassets.com/9ngnddy96o6ahr9g/images/25-aaf...
3. https://html.scribdassets.com/9ngnddy96o6ahr9g/images/26-5c5...
4. https://html.scribdassets.com/9ngnddy96o6ahr9g/images/28-f1c...
You probably have, but many of them pretend to be gay professionally (source: my wife worked as a hair stylist for many years).
Duh?
The only reason that organized misandry isn’t taken seriously is the pervasive misandry in HR, education, and other female dominated fields.
Education has been female dominated for forty years — and becoming less equal. Universities are currently 60% women and 40% men.
Have you heard of a single scholarship to help men reach “equity”? …anyone?
Apparently that's something you can say with impunity.
I don’t know, but I do know that saying: "I only want to hire men to work for me" will get you fired before the end of the week..
Female colleague: "Let's hire her, she's a woman."
Me: "That's illegal."
Female colleague: "oh well... make sure you interview her..."
What if one workplace becomes the next Google? Suddenly, those favoured by that workplace have a large advantage over those discriminated against.
But it's usually sectors, rather than individual organisations, that blow up like that, and sectors tend to share culture. Don't think Google; think the entirety of Silicon Valley. You're an [immutable characteristic]? Tough; settle for lower working conditions, or retrain for another job.
Why should there be social equality?
Equal opportunity has enabled egalitarian societies to be tremendously successful. You are fundamentally able to use greater talent base per capita than a society which doesn't. The results will force everyone to do this and this is a great thing.
A problem arrives in which people arent in equal positions. So for us in Canada we have the legal right to discriminate against people so long as we are doing it to benefit a group defined as 'disadvantaged'. However, that doesn't account for anything. So for example hairdressing which is dominated by women can discriminate against men. Reverse sexism is legal. They call this 'leveling' but it is actually harmful.
What you get is a situation in which the 'disadvantaged' are no longer disadvantaged and the advantaged are the disadvantaged.
Well, no, there isn't. Organizations can and do get sued out of existence for specific types of discrimination.
Gender is an immutable characteristic? That's debatable. But whether it is or isn't doesn't seem to make discriminating by it better or worse. That makes immutability a poor discriminator of tolerable discrimination.
Actually I don't think anybody's debating that - transexuals say that they were born as whatever gender they identify with, they just say it doesn't match what their body looks like. Everybody seems to agree that it's immutable, even if there are people who can't seem to quite agree on how it's identified.
In LGBTQ+ circles, everyone is debating everything all the time, and that's one of the problems when trying to assess their positions.
But let's not lose sight or minimize that women are (currently and historically) discriminated against on a scale that dwarfs this - in hiring, salary, and society at large.
Even historically speaking, that's a stretch. For a long period of human history, survival meant being able to plow fields, wrangle horses, chop down trees, hunt wooly mammoths, fight lions and all the other things that my ancestors would be ashamed of me for not being able to do. Men were expected to, and did, protect and provide for women because most men find those tasks easier than most women. Not even the hardest feminist would call that protection "discriminatory". It's only been relatively recently, on a grand scale, that most women could perform the tasks that needed to be performed to survive. More or less as soon as that happened, most of civilization became egalitarian almost overnight. There was some pushback in the 70's but as Bill Maher pointed out "we couldn't understand what you were rebelling against! Men in my father's day used to say 'I'll be damned if any wife of mine ever has to go to work!'"
But there are many (typically men's rights orgs) who seize on stories like this to say that 'enough is enough and truly it is us men who are being marginalized [in ways beyond what the article says]' and thats not at all true.
Yeah, historically men were forced to work 12 hours in coal mines, oil rigs, garbage dumps, forests, in deep seas with next to nothing safety equipment and with no regulations while women were forced to stay in their homes with their children. Where can I sign up for this kind of discrimination?
That is why I was calling for a sense of perspective in advance.
It just doesn't really add anything to the current topic.
There are a lot more people arguing that men suffer almost equally in discrimination or women have it better, then I had expected.
All of them by men.
> All of them by men.
You are also a man, and I'm sure you're aware that there are much stronger cultural narratives around men rescuing women than the other way around.
A bit of introspection is needed here.
Happy International Men's Day.
This is the same intolerant gatekeeping that I loathe in the feminist camp. Everyone has a voice, anyone can participate, no one-person gets to define "the" problem, let alone label/dehumanize people as being problems.
Well of course, this is not a dictatorship and I'm not a dictator. I'm stating my opinion on a forum.
In the same way flat-Earthers have no place teaching astronomy, someone who believes the pay gap is women getting paid less for the same work has no place teaching sociology. That is intolerant, but so it should be.
Gatekeeping is inevitable and necessary, the problem is that the wrong people currently hold the keys. You can find yourself locked out for stating that the wage gap is one side of a compromise, or that men get harsher criminal punishments (for the same crimes), or that female-perpetrated sexual abuse has been grossly undercounted (my personal grievance). If we want to confront these issues, then the existing gatekeepers need to be replaced, not tolerated.
The "conversation", which I assume to be the societal conversation i.e. marketplace of ideas is explicitly a free, and public one.